The Green Lady and the King of Shadows

by Moyra Caldecott

  ‘Matthew,’ he whispered with a dry and rasping throat. ‘Matt . . . if only I could give you your life again . . . if only . . .’

  Lights began to flash around him. He could see them even through his closed lids . . . and the seeing brought unimaginable pain.

  * * * *

  For how long Cerdic lay in this state he could not tell, but gradually the light began to lessen and the pain abate. He found he could open his eyes. He turned his head warily for it was still aching, and looked to see if he was still in that dark and stinking alley under the wall that shut out the sky. He was. But even as he groaned to think of it he heard a cracking sound and turned his head to look what it could be. He stared astonished. One of the flagstones on which he lay among the rotting garbage had cracked across and something was pushing through the crack. He dragged himself up to a sitting position, not taking his eyes off the crack for a moment, sickened and fearful as to what new horror was being prepared for him.

  At first a small white thing that looked like a worm crawled out of the darkness from under the stone, but as it moved and grew larger every moment he realized that it wasn’t a worm at all, but was an unfolding shoot. He gasped and now lent forward the better to see it. The shoot came up bent to protect itself and then began to unfold. Within moments he was staring at a small leaf on a sturdy stem. The rock was cracking further all the time. More leaves unfurled . . . the stem grew stronger . . . taller . . .

  Other sounds attracted his attention and he turned his head. Everywhere he looked . . . the walls . . . the pavement . . . everything . . . was cracking open and the plant kingdom was reclaiming its own. He stood up and began to shout and jump with the joy of seeing green leaves again. Walls began to tumble and he had to dodge and dart about . . . but he didn’t care because all the time grass and trees were growing . . . darkness was lifting and the soft sunlight that he used to know was beginning to spread over everything . . .

  18

  When Lukas at last dared to lift his head he too was astonished at what he saw. Three Beings of Light were upon the summit of the Tor, and there was no sign of the Lord of Annwn’s palace, nor of the King of Shadows himself. Brother Collen was beside him and his face was glowing with awe and reverence.

  ‘Who are they?’ whispered Lukas, clutching the hermit’s arm.

  ‘One of them you know,’ he answered softly.

  Lukas stared but did not recognize any of them.

  ‘You know her as the Lady Creiddylad,’ Collen whispered.

  Lukas saw now that it was she, the girl he loved, but now transformed . . . the Mother of the Earth, the bringer of Life and renewal . . . The Green Lady in full glory.

  ‘How beautiful,’ he thought, and his heart ached to see such beauty.

  ‘The others?’ he whispered to Brother Collen.

  ‘That one I think is Gabriel, the Angel of Revelation.’

  Lukas trembled. The deep blue of the cloak worn by Gabriel was the colour of the sky before full dawn, transparent and glowing. As he moved silver and green flows of light gleamed through it.

  Lukas turned to the other and his heart leapt. The Angel Mik-hael, the destroyer of demons, the champion of the Lord Christ. His sword forged in the white heat of the human heart. His face too bright to look upon. His stature beyond human comprehension.

  Now Lukas watched him turn to leave, and, with the movement of his shoulder, it was as though the rising sun was lifted from behind the earth and its golden splendour pulled across the sky . . . his cloak of flame, the sunrise . . .

  Lukas hardly dared to breathe. He stared and stared . . . trying to drink everything in and hold it to himself. The night had passed and he had not noticed it. What he had once known of time, of reality and of illusion, no longer made sense.

  Brother Collen touched Lukas’ arm. He too was trembling.

  Lukas looked at him and followed his pointing finger to the landscape below the Tor.

  Like an evil dream Gwynn’s mess was gone. The lovely earth was green again, the waters gold and red with the reflection of the dawn. A lark rose from the forest and hung above their heads . . . singing . . .

  But Gwythyr’s heart still ached for the woman he had loved. Great spirit she might be — but he had known her as woman.

  And then they found her, a frail, spent figure, a lady of great age. She lay curled like a wisp of smoke, scarcely breathing. He leant over her; he stroked her silver hair, her soft cheek.

  Faintly she shook her head. ‘You must not mourn for me,’ she whispered. ‘You have a new life to live and I will never be far away. Once out of time and space there is no far and near, after or before . . .’

  He kissed her gently knowing that it was for the last time as Gwythyr and Creiddylad, as Lukas and the Lady of the cavern. She looked past his head to Collen.

  ‘Gwynn’s scheme has not won through this time,’ she said faintly. ‘But keep watch; it doesn’t need a power-crazed sorcerer to bring it about — the dark side of the human heart is a perpetual challenge to the light.’

  Her eyes closed. She was slipping away from them.

  ‘Stay,’ Lukas cried hoarsely. ‘I cannot live without you! Stay. Please stay!’

  But her earth-body was dead, her last breath a sigh.

  * * * *

  Lukas drew back from her. Collen put his arm around his shoulder.

  ‘What now?’ Lukas asked sadly. After such a night how could they live as before?

  Collen shook his head and was silent. So much had happened, so many forces were at work in their lives. It seemed to him that the Abbot represented as dark a force as Gwynn. He demanded obedience to a god he did not understand. ‘Not for love,’ Collen thought, ‘not for love he asks us to give up self — but for fear.’ The two had so much power, so much potential for good, yet they turned it against the flow, the rhythm of the universe. ‘Two of a kind,’ he muttered, ‘each missing the point of his own religion.’ Each paying too much attention to the physical realm. One to manipulate it by imposing unnatural disciplines on the body, the other to manipulate it by using magic — both forgetting that it is the questing individual spirit and its urge to evolve and grow at its own pace and in its own way that keeps the universe on course and in harmony with its timeless purpose.

  ‘It is up to us now,’ he said aloud and shook himself free of moody speculation. ‘We have been given a fresh start and we must make the most of it.’

  Lukas pointed to the pewter bottle at his belt.

  ‘You did not use the holy water after all,’ he said. ‘Would it not be fitting to pour it out upon the Tor as a kind of . . . offering and . . . a kind of cleansing?’

  Brother Collen took the pewter bottle from his belt and held it high. Lukas watched as it flowed like liquid crystal through the clear air and seeped into the grass. When the last drop was gone, they smiled at each other, feeling that the Tor at least was now clear of Gwynn’s dark dream.

  ‘We should bury her,’ Lukas said now, looking at the figure of the grey lady.

  ‘Aye.’

  As they stooped to lift her they noticed that the amber had been shattered by the strength of the forces that had fought around it all night long, and it lay now in a small pile of flame coloured dust beside her.

  Lukas scooped it up in his hands and blew upon it, so that it took to the air and drifted with the breezes of the morning to lie at last scattered upon the land.

  When he turned back to her, she too was dust, and there was nothing left to bury.

  * * * *

  They looked around them. It was as though nothing had happened. The sun was settled into its daily path, and the air was warming nicely. In a field not far from the edge of the forest a herd of cows was being driven out by a farmer’s boy. Lukas could see a horse and its foal, and people far below on the road, going to market.

  * * * *

  In the infirmary Matthew opened his eyes and smiled.

  SOURCES

  1) For the story of the confronta
tion of Gwynn ap Nudd and the Christian hermit, Saint Collen:

  Lives of the British Saints (Life of Saint Collen) S. Baring Gould, Pub. John Hodges, London 1875.

  The Mabinogion by Lady Charlotte Guest (note to p.100), Pub. J.M. Dent & Co., 1906.

  Glastonbury Tor: A Guide to the History and Legends by Nick Mann, Pub. Annenterprise, 1986.

  Gwynn ap Nudd was called ‘the king of the fairies’ in the story of Saint Collen. Fairies in Celtic times and the Dark Ages were often the result of race memories of a people who had lived long, long before; a people powerful and magical, capable of magnificent transformations and illusions; associated with stone circles, with timelessness, with mazes and with earth mounds; a people whose knowledge of other realities and whose deeds of magic and transformation had become exaggerated and feared over the centuries.

  2) For the story of Gwynn ap Nudd’s relationship with Gwythyr, son of Greidyawl, and Creiddylad:

  The Mabinogion by Lady Charlotte Guest (note to p.100 and the story of ‘Kilhwch and Olwen’).

  The Mabinogion by Jeffrey Gantz (the story of ‘How Culhwch won Olwen’ pp.159, 167, 168), Pub. Penguin, 1976.

  3) For legends about a tunnel under the Tor:

  Glastonbury Tor: a guide to the history and legends by Nick Mann, Pub. Annenterprise 1986.

  Glastonbury: Maker of Myths by Frances Howard-Gordon, Pub. Gothic Image 1982.

  Article by Ann Pennick in Glastonbury, Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, edited by Anthony Roberts, Pub. Rider 1978.

  4) For the story of the Green Lady or Earth Goddess imprisoned in the Tor (the ‘Persephone connection’), first mentioned in the biography of Gildas written by Caradoc of Llancarfan in connection with Guinevere’s kidnapping and imprisonment by King Melwas of Somerset, see Geoffrey Ashe: Avalon, The Story of Glastonbury (Fontana, 1977) and The Quest for Arthur’s Britain (Paladin, 1968). In Glastonbury Tor: a guide to the history and legends, Nick Mann writes:

  ’Returning to Caradoc’s story of Melwas, and his imprisonment on the Tor of Guinevere and the ensuing struggle with Arthur, interesting things occur when it is compared with the story of the rivalry between Gwynn and Gwythyr for Creiddylad . . . The mythical quality of the whole increases when it is clear that in both cases Creiddylad and Guinevere are daughters of a solar king . . .

  ’If the Arthur and Melwas story is an update of the earlier Celtic legend of Gwynn and Gwythyr, and if Caradoc had good reasons from his sources for locating the struggle on the Tor (the legend of St Collen makes it clear that Gwynn at least was to be found there), then we may have a glimpse of Celtic and pagan beliefs surrounding the symbolic nature of the Tor.

  ’We may speculate that the Tor was the scene of some great fertility ritual at the beginning of May, where the powers of Earth and Heaven struck a balance to ensure the return of the sun and the continuation of the cycle of the year.’

  The ‘Persephone connection’ is also implicit in the Great Mother, Earth Goddess link with Glastonbury Tor drawn by Frances Howard-Gordon in her book Glastonbury: Maker of Myths, pub. Gothic Image 1982.

  5) Glastonbury Isle as the entrance to the Celtic Otherworld is mentioned by many authors including Geoffrey Ashe in Camelot and the Vision of Albion (Panther, 1973).

  6) The Otherworld itself as a golden land entered through a passage between crystal trees after a boat ride over water is well described in Early Irish Myths and Sagas by Jeffrey Gantz, pub. Penguin, 1981.

  7) The shaman’s bag of crane-skin: Keltic Folk and Faerie Tales by Kaledon Naddair, pub. Rider, 1987: ‘Keltic Druids kept their Koelbren lots, their Ogham “Cranchann” within a crane/heron skin bag.’ Cranes are related to ‘the young goddess of Fertility’ and to those who ‘preside over the mysteries of reincarnation . . .’

  8) The perpetual choir of Glastonbury monastery is mentioned in the Welsh Triads and by Geoffrey Ashe in Camelot and the Vision of Albion.

  9) For Gwynn’s challenge of the stars see: John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus by Peter J. French, pub. RKP, 1972 (p.116). ‘. . . the religious magus could theoretically change the stars and control the heavenly powers. But the strain would be so great that his body would be destroyed and his spiritual essence would be completely absorbed into the Godhead. This great transformation was exactly what Dee was attempting through his magic.’

  * * * *

  I cannot give every source from a lifetime of reading — but these are the most recent I have consulted.

  About Moyra Caldecott

  Moyra Caldecott was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1927, and moved to London in 1951. She married Oliver Caldecott and raised three children. She has degrees in English and Philosophy and an M.A. in English Literature.

  Moyra Caldecott has earned a reputation as a novelist who writes as vividly about the adventures and experiences to be encountered in the inner realms of the human consciousness as she does about those in the outer physical world. To Moyra, reality is multidimensional.

  Books by Moyra Caldecott

  Titles marked with an asterisk are either available or forthcoming from Mushroom eBooks. Please visit www.mushroom-ebooks.com for more information.

  FICTION

  Guardians of the Tall Stones:

  The Tall Stones*

  The Temple of the Sun*

  Shadow on the Stones*

  The Silver Vortex*

  Weapons of the Wolfhound*

  The Eye of Callanish*

  The Lily and the Bull*

  The Tower and the Emerald*

  Etheldreda*

  Child of the Dark Star*

  Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun*

  Akhenaten: Son of the Sun*

  Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra*

  The Ghost of Akhenaten*

  The Winged Man*

  The Waters of Sul*

  The Green Lady and the King of Shadows*

  NON-FICTION/MYTHS AND LEGENDS

  Crystal Legends*

  Three Celtic Tales*

  Women in Celtic Myth

  Myths of the Sacred Tree

  Mythical Journeys: Legendary Quests

  CHILDREN’S STORIES

  Adventures by Leaflight